Where do
people find joy?
We seek happiness and it often eludes us -
but joy, joy is something quite apart from, above and beyond
happiness.
As a child I remember the great joy of watching
the Coronation with the whole street on my father's new TV. Today we flip restlessly through the TV channels
with a dulled sensation.
The options for pleasure are multiplied but
they often fail to give joy.
We may live comfortably at a material level
yet boredom and depression remain the lot of many.
Even the multitude of choices we have
before us steal away our happiness at having a choice. We feel bereaved of the other 99 options when
we choose the one! There’s only joy if you keep your mind on what you’ve
decided and forget the 99 you’ve forsaken.
Perhaps those who prefer a ‘keeping your
options open’ cohabitation to marriage are in risk of losing the joy that lies
in permanent commitment to one path and one person?
This morning it’s a great pleasure to have
Ed and Charlotte back in front of the altar where we celebrated their marriage
three years ago. On that occasion I voiced how they see themselves as a team
and how teamwork requires trust and clarity of purpose. Such agreed clarity of
purpose has brought them once again to the Christian Church with their families
and friends for they’ve been team building! We rejoice with you both on the
birth last year of Phoebe Isla Betts and her baptism this morning.
She is, like any infant, a joy- giver.
How is it that children give us such joy?
They are humble, simple and trustful.
I was reflecting on this during the week
and went back to the journal of one of my favourite Christian writers,
Alexander Schmemann, an Orthodox priest who lived and taught in New York in the
late 20th century. Something he wrote about the ‘I’ passion of pride
rang a bell. It’s reproduced on the back of the service booklet:
‘Anything, one
way or the other, even in microscopic dose, connected with pride, is connected
with the devil and with the diabolical. Religion also is a ready-made field of
action for the devil’s forces. Everything, absolutely everything in religion is
ambiguous, and this ambiguity can be cleared only by humility, so that the
whole spiritual life is or must be directed to seeking humility.
‘The signs of humility: joy! Pride excludes joy. Then: simplicity, i.e., the absence of any turn into one’s self. Finally, trust, as the main directive in life, applied to everything (purity of heart, when man can see God). The signs of pride are: the absence of joy; complexity and fear. All this can be verified every day, every hour, by watching one’s self and contemplating life around.
‘It is frightening to think that in some sense, the Church also lives with pride – ‘the rights of the churches’…and a flood of joyless complicated and fearful spirituality’. It is a continuous self-destruction. We try to protect the “Truth”, we fight with something and for something without understanding that Truth appears and conquers only when it is alive: “humble yourself, be like a slave”, and you will have a liberating joy and simplicity, where humility is radiant in its divine beauty; where God is revealed in creation and salvation. How can I live by this? How can I convince others?’
How indeed! These are rich, dense words but
in them I saw an underlining of three qualities in Phoebe and all children that
are the cause of their and our joy – humility, simplicity and trust.
Where do
people find joy?
Through deepening those childlike qualities
of humility, simplicity and trust. We don’t want to stay childish but we do
need to stay child-like if the Christian thing is to mean anything at all.
Indeed, As Schmemann says many of the Church’s
troubles are in a loss of joy through making things over complicated – and God
forgive me if bringing this passage to you has had that effect! It’s not
simple, but I love the challenge of it:
‘“Humble yourself, be like a slave”, and you will have a
liberating joy and simplicity, where humility is radiant in its divine beauty.’
Joy is something beyond us. It’s the radiant, beautiful infectious presence
of God alongside us and within us.
To live a life close to God is what baptism
is all about. As we come close to God he
comes close to us and in his presence is
the fullness of joy. This is our
prayer for Phoebe and her family this mid-Advent Gaudete (Joy) Sunday – that
they live continually in joy, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit obtained by
coming to God in repentance and faith.
Phoebe’s parents and godparents will shortly express this coming to God by saying I turn to Christ, I repent of my sins, I renounce evil.
To remain joyful they will have to hold themselves
close to God by continual repentance.
When we come to Church week by week we show
a determination towards God. We affirm to ourselves that it is the invisible
and inner realities of life that transcend our outer and peripheral concerns.
Joy is the
anointing of the Holy Spirit upon those who seek God with their whole heart.
May this holy season of Advent renew our
spiritual determination so that St. Giles can be made a beacon of joy, its
building and its people, overflowing with the Spirit of God!
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
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